ARTIST AND FASHION SIGHTINGS IN THE BIG APPLE (c) By Polly Guerin

Artists take the limelight in gallery vernissages, fashionistas’ take a holiday, the mad hatter comes to the Big Apple and dioramas fascinate and cultivate the mind. It’s the Best of New York my friends, the very best events---mark your calendar. Here’s the scoop!!!
RED GROOMS NEW YORK: 1976-2011. Red Groom’s celebrates New York as the theme of the exhibition of the artist’s paintings, sculptures and installation pieces. Grooms has staked his claim as one of America’s most original, inventive, and popular artists with witty commentaries on modern life in New York such as Lunchtime on Broadway, Rainy Day Taxi and The Bus, which is a twenty one foot long recreation of a New York City bus. Grooms’ large scale figurative tableaux are more than entertainment. Caricature is often vicious and Grooms can offer a no-holds-barred message with bite. At the Marlborough Gallery, 40 West 57th St. through October 222, 2011. www.marlboroughgallery.com.
THE MAD HATTER Comes to New York. In addition to designing his own sensational hats, “An Anthology by British milliner, Stephen Jones” is a show stopper at the Bard Graduate Center, 18 West 86th Sts. It’s a breathtaking excursion through the history of hats, chosen by the master milliner who co-curated the exhibit of over 250 examples from Tudor England and the 18th-century India to contemporary New York milliners including Ellen Christine, Rod Keenan, Jennifer Ouellette to name a few. Leave it to Jones, the exhibit is edited into four themes; Inspiration, Creation, the Salon and The Client. Don’t miss it…there’s a peak into Jones’ amazing atelier workroom where creativity, ribbon and trims spills over onto the desk top and the floor. Through April 15, 2012. www.bgc.bard.edu.
DAPHNE GUINNESS The fashion show stopper superstar, who first ranked on the International Best Dress List in 1994, gets her due in a new exhibition that raided her closets at the Museum at FIT, 27th street & Seventh Ave., through Jan. 7, 2012. Why Daphne? Well aside from by being a creative force in her own right, she uses fashion to transform herself, and having an iconic sense of style and a serious couture collection, Daphne’s individualism transports us into imaginary worlds of opulence, decadence and luxury. Wearing ten-inch towering shoes and her classic white shirt and black leggings and her fantastic platinum-and-black striped hair she said at the press opening, “You should always dress up because you never know what man you may meet.” The exhibit opens with her footwear and sections intersected with walls of mirrors and scrims a hologram and short films and areas cordoned off: “Dandyism,” “Armor,” “Chic,” “Evening Chic,” “Exoticism” and “Sparkle.” Don’t miss this fashion icon’s “ultimate fashion fantasy.”www.fitnyc.edu.
OTHERWORLDLY: Optical Delusions and Small Realities is a rare and Lilliputian collection that traces the diorama back to Louis Daguerre to modern artist’s meticulous models and dioramas that invite you to investigate and be captivated by the meticulous artistry of cunningly created domestic and imaginary scenes. Chuck Close contemplating an unfinished portrait or Jackson Pollock frozen in the act of casting paint across a canvas on the floor resonates as familiar while Frank Kunert’s Menu a Deux a long table covered in linen and laid with silver bends 90 degrees around a corner, so the diners can watch two separate television and pretend they are alone. At the Museum of Arts and Design, closing this week. www.madmuseum.org.
Ta Ta darlings!!! I went to Daphne’s exhibit and it did not disappoint. In fact, I was really quite overwhelmed! Her staggering reinvention of fashion and the marvel of her 10-inch shoe collection and jewelry are worth the visit. Fan mail welcome: pollytalk@verizon.net. Visit Polly’s Blogs by clicking in the right-hand column on www.pollytalk.com. Polly’s amazingartdecodivas feature on Marianne Brandt, Bauhaus Metallist is recently published in Contemporary Horizon magazine in Romania.